MMOGs and evolution
I've read some interesting books lately and I feel like writing about some of them.
The first is fiction by Charles Stross, called Halting State. This book is crime story set in near-future and as such is about the only way to get me reading crime stories. I like Stross's writing style, and he seems to have made good background research. This is no wonder considering his background in the IT and his interests, but some writers fail in this. As a player of an MMOG and a general nerd, I found his description of the multiplayer games and the technology in the book good and non-intrusive. The story was fun, too.
Recommended, especially if you know massively multiplayer games, but it's good even if you don't - the things are explained well enough, and it doesn't feel like a gratituous infodump. I can recommend Stross's other books, too, I haven't yet read one I'd find boring.
On the fact front, I read a book called Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters, by Donald R. Prothero. It was recommended in some blog or another, I can't anymore remember which. It sounded interesting, so I bought and read it.
The book was about evolution and fossils, obviously. It tells how fossils and observations now prove evolution as well as you can prove anything in science. The book was clearly written for the US market, and it was targeted specifically against the intellectual abomination called 'Intelligent Design'. ID is just creationism in a new guise, and seems to be a more powerful force in the US than here in quite-secular Finland. There wasn't that much new in the book for me, but I've been reading Dawkins and other biology writings for twenty years, so that isn't so much of a surprise.
The book is nicely written and easy to read. I liked it, even though it dedicates much of the text to attacking ID people. It scared me that the ID people are so dishonest - one of the points of this book is that it's nearly useless to debate with them. You can counter all their points, even get them to admit that they're wrong and then they'll continue with the same lies next day. This makes it tough to talk against them, but it's still necessary, even here - there are some ID people here in Finland, but mostly they get countered, and the schools at least try to explain things as they really are.
Recommended if you're interested in evolution.
The first is fiction by Charles Stross, called Halting State. This book is crime story set in near-future and as such is about the only way to get me reading crime stories. I like Stross's writing style, and he seems to have made good background research. This is no wonder considering his background in the IT and his interests, but some writers fail in this. As a player of an MMOG and a general nerd, I found his description of the multiplayer games and the technology in the book good and non-intrusive. The story was fun, too.
Recommended, especially if you know massively multiplayer games, but it's good even if you don't - the things are explained well enough, and it doesn't feel like a gratituous infodump. I can recommend Stross's other books, too, I haven't yet read one I'd find boring.
On the fact front, I read a book called Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters, by Donald R. Prothero. It was recommended in some blog or another, I can't anymore remember which. It sounded interesting, so I bought and read it.
The book was about evolution and fossils, obviously. It tells how fossils and observations now prove evolution as well as you can prove anything in science. The book was clearly written for the US market, and it was targeted specifically against the intellectual abomination called 'Intelligent Design'. ID is just creationism in a new guise, and seems to be a more powerful force in the US than here in quite-secular Finland. There wasn't that much new in the book for me, but I've been reading Dawkins and other biology writings for twenty years, so that isn't so much of a surprise.
The book is nicely written and easy to read. I liked it, even though it dedicates much of the text to attacking ID people. It scared me that the ID people are so dishonest - one of the points of this book is that it's nearly useless to debate with them. You can counter all their points, even get them to admit that they're wrong and then they'll continue with the same lies next day. This makes it tough to talk against them, but it's still necessary, even here - there are some ID people here in Finland, but mostly they get countered, and the schools at least try to explain things as they really are.
Recommended if you're interested in evolution.